James Ford Rhodes (18481927). History of the Civil War, 18611865 1917.

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an unfriendly attitude toward the recruitment of the army, for political prisoners, for persons suspected of any disloyal practice, the privilege did not exist. It was suspended for one year, ten months and twenty-one days by Executive assumption and for the rest of the period by the authorization of Congress.

The provocation for the use of arbitrary power was, all things considered, about equal in the Confederacy and the Union. In the Union the disloyal secret societies were larger and more dangerous, and the public criticism of the administration more copious and bitter. There was, too, the organized political party which made a focus for the opposition and developed Vallandigham, who had no counterpart at the South. But these considerations are balanced by the circumstance that in the South was the seat of war which was never but for brief periods moved north of Mason and Dixons line and the Ohio river. Civil administration is everywhere relaxed, wrote Judge Campbell as early as October, 1862, and has lost much of its energy, and our entire Confederacy is like a city in a state of siege, cut off from all intercourse with foreign nations and invaded by a superior force at every assailable point. Where armies stand in opposition disloyalty may give the enemy aid and comfort so substantial as to decide an impending battle; far from the front it is apt to spend itself in bluster, threats and secret midnight oaths. In the Confederacy there was practically no important place east of the Mississippi river which was not at one time or another invaded or threatened by the invader. The courts, it is true, were open in the South, but, owing to the disorganized state of society, the interruption of trade and the passage of stay laws by the States, they tried few commercial cases but confined themselves to criminal jurisdiction